A New Testability Calculation Method to Guide RTL Test Generation

Current paper presents a unified approach for calculating mixed-level testability measures. In addition, a new method of testability guided RTL Automated Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) for sequential circuits is introduced. The methods and algorithms are based on path tracing procedures on decision diagrams. The previous known methods have been implemented in test synthesis and in guiding gate-level test generation. However, works on application of testability measures to guide high-level test generation are missing. The main aim of this paper is to bridge this gap. Current method is compared to a recent approach known from the test synthesis area. Experiments show that testability measures greatly influence the fault coverage in RT-level test generation with the proposed approach achieving the best results. Similar to earlier works, our research confirms that RT-level fault coverage is in correlation with logic level one.This revised version was published online in March 2005 with corrections to the cover date.     

Integrating testability with design space exploration

Built-in self-test (BIST) has emerged as a promising test solution for high-speed, deep sub-micron VLSI circuits. Traditionally, the testability insertion phase comes after functional logic synthesis and verification in the design cycle. This creates two separate optimisation processes: functional optimisation followed by BIST insertion and optimisation. The first deals with functional design behaviour, while the second deals with test behaviour. Considering testability at such a late stage in the design flow limits efficient design space exploration. In this paper, we consider testability as a design objective alongside area and delay. We extend the concept of design space to include testability and show how this enhanced design space can be used by a high-level synthesis tool. We demonstrate that by taking testability into account at an early stage, we can generate better designs than by leaving BIST insertion to the end of the design cycle.     

Design for Testability Techniques at the Behavioral and Register-Transfer Levels

Improving testability during the early stages of the design flow can have several benefits, including significantly improved fault coverage, reduced test hardware overheads, and reduced design iteration times. This paper presents an overview of high-level design methodologies that consider testability during the early (behavior and architecture) stages of the design flow, and their testability benefits. The topics reviewed include behavioral and RTL test synthesis approaches that generate easily testable implementations targeting ATPG (full and partial scan) and BIST methodologies, and techniques to use high-level information for ATPG.     

Incremental Testability Analysis for Partial Scan Selection and Design Transformations

This paper presents an efficient estimation method for incremental testability analysis, which is based partially on explicit testability re-calculation and partially on gradient techniques. The analysis results have been used successfully to guide design transformations and partial scan selection. Experimental results on a variety of benchmarks show that the quality of our incremental testability analysis is similar to those of the conventional explicit testability re-calculation methods and the technique can be used efficiently for improving the testability of a design during the high-level test synthesis and partial scan selection processes.     

Incorporating testability considerations in high-level synthesis

In this article we propose two novel methods to improve the testability of the designs produced by high-level synthesis tools. Our first method, loop-breaking algorithm, identifies self-loops in a design generated by a high-level synthesis system and eliminates as many of these loops as possible by altering the register and module bindings. The second method, BINET with test cost, is a binding algorithm that takes the cost of testing into account during the binding phase of the high-level synthesis. The test cost considered in this article is a function of the number of self-loops in the synthesized design. Thus it generates only those solutions that have fewer if any self-loops. Finally we put the two methods together in which we first use BINET with test cost to produce nearly self-loop free designs and we further improve their testability by using the loop-breaking algorithm. We applied these methods to synthesis benchmark circuits and the results of our study, given in this article, show that the designs produced by our method have indeed reduced testability overhead and improved testability.     

High-level library mapping for arithmetic components

We describe high-level library mapping (HLLM), a technique that permits reuse of complex RT-level databook components (specifically ALUs). HLLM can be used to couple existing databook libraries, module generators and custom-designed components with the output of architectural or behavioral synthesis. In this paper, we define the problem of high-level library mapping, present some algorithmic formulations for HLLM of ALUs, and demonstrate the versatility of our approach on a variety of libraries. We also compare HLLM against the traditional mapping approach using logic synthesis. Our experiments show that HLLM for ALUs outperforms logic synthesis in area, delay, and runtime, indicating that HLLM is a promising approach for reuse of datapath components in architectural design and high-level synthesis     

High-Level Test Synthesis for Behavioral and Structural Designs

High-Level Test Synthesis (HLTS), a term introduced in recent years, promises automatic enhancement of testability of a circuit. In this paper we will show how HLTS can achieve higher testability for BIST-oriented test methodologies. Our results show considering testability during high-level synthesis, better testability can be obtained when compared to DFT at low level. Transformation for testability, which allows behavioral modification for testability, is a very powerful HLTS technique.     

Automated synthesis for testability

The authors present an integrated, compiler-driven approach to digital chip design that automates mask layout and test-pattern generation for 100% stuck-at fault coverage. This approach is well suited for designs where it is most important the minimize the design cycle time rather than the silicon area. The authors show that by compiling from a unified design specification followed by logic synthesis it is possible to reduce the problem of automatic test-pattern generation. They present a language-based design capture and logic synthesis with hierarchical test pattern generation and redundancy removal techniques. A section on benchmark results highlights the close coupling of a language-based design specification, logic synthesis, and testability     

Partial scan design of register-transfer level circuits

Register-transfer level designs that are derived from high-level synthesis systems generally consist of functional blocks and registers that are interconnected by multiplexers and buses to maximize resource sharing These multiplexer and bus structures have the unique ability to behave asswitches, i.e., to logically partition the circuit when their control inputs are manipulated in different ways. The presence of switches, the selection of scan registers can be influenced. This leads to an efficient partial scan methodology presented in this paper. Second, switches help set up data transfer paths calledI-paths. By employingI-paths to transport test data, the functional logic in the circuit can be separated from the switching logic for the purpose of test generation. This can lead to a reduction in test generation costs for a partial scan design. Thus the techniques presented in this paper help to minimize both testability overhead and test generation cost in bus-based circuits. This methodology is implemented in the SIESTA system for serial scan design.     

High-level test synthesis based on controller redefinition

A novel approach is proposed for the high-level synthesis of data-dominated circuits. The functionality of the controller is redefined in order to improve the testability of the final circuit. The data path is left untouched. Test results are obtained at gate-level, after the RT synthesis process, with a sequential test generation package, HITEC     

Optimal state assignment technique for partial scan designs

The state assignment of a finite state machine greatly affects the delay, area and testability of sequential circuits. To reduce the length and number of feedback cycles, a new state assignment technique based on m-block partitioning is introduced. Following the completion of the proposed state assignment and logic synthesis stage, partial scan design is performed to choose the minimal number of scan flip-flops. Experimental results show that a drastic improvement in testability can be realised while maintaining a low area and delay overhead     

Highly testable design of BiCMOS logic circuits

Most of the work reported in the literature to date on the testability of BiCMOS circuits has concentrated on fault characterization and the need for a suitable testing method that can address the peculiarities of BiCMOS circuits. The problem of adequately testing large BiCMOS logic networks remains open and complex. In this paper, we introduce a new design for testability technique for BiCMOS logic gates that results in highly testable BiCMOS logic circuits. The proposed design incorporates two features: a test charge/discharge path and built-in current sensing (BICS). The test charge/discharge path is activated only during testing and facilitates the testing of stuck-open faults using single test vectors. BICS facilitates testing of faults that cause excessive IDDQ. HSPICE simulation results show that the proposed design can detect stuck-open faults at a test speed of 10 MHz. Faults causing excessive IDDQ are detected by BICS with a detection time of 1 ns and a settling time of 2 ns. Impact of the proposed design on normal operation is minimal. The increase in propagation delay in normal operation is less than 3%. This compares very favorably with CMOS BICS reported in the literature, where the propagation delay increase was 20%, 14.4% respectively. The increase in the area is less than 15%     

Physical design of testable VLSI: techniques and experiments

It is shown that the layout of VLSI circuits can affect testability and in some cases reduce the number of faults likely in a design, easing test generation. A method for analyzing circuits at the symbolic layout level and enhancing testability using local transformations is presented. To demonstrate the application of the technique a set of CMOS standard cells was redesigned. The standard cells are used in the MIS synthesis system, allowing the designer to modify interactively designs to perform tradeoff analysis on testable designs. To show the usefulness of the technique, an experiment was performed: example circuits were synthesized, and test vectors were generated and then used in a transistor-level fault simulator. It was found that the modified designs have significantly higher fault coverage than unmodified designs. A strategy for the synthesis of easily testable combinational random logic circuits is presented     

Integration of hierarchical test generation with behavioralsynthesis of controller and data path circuits

This paper describes the first behavioral synthesis system that incorporates a hierarchical test generation approach to synthesize area-efficient and highly testable controller/data path circuits. Functional information of circuit modules is used during the synthesis process to facilitate complete and easy testability of the data path. The controller behavior is taken into account while targeting data path testability. No direct controllability of the controller outputs through scan or otherwise is assumed. The test set for the combined controller/data path is generated during synthesis in a very short time. Near 100% testability of combined controller and data path is achieved. The synthesis system easily handles large bit-width data path circuits with sequential loops and conditional branches in their behavioral specification, and scheduling constructs like multicycling, chaining and structural pipelining. An improvement of about three to four orders of magnitude was usually obtained in the test generation time for the synthesized benchmarks as compared to an efficient gate-level sequential test generator. The testability overheads are almost zero. Furthermore, in many cases at-speed testing is also possible     

Functional Fault Equivalence and Diagnostic Test Generation in Combinational Logic Circuits Using Conventional ATPG

Fault equivalence is an essential concept in digital design with significance in fault diagnosis, diagnostic test generation, testability analysis and logic synthesis. In this paper, an efficient algorithm to check whether two faults are equivalent is presented. If they are not equivalent, the algorithm returns a test vector that distinguishes them. The proposed approach is complete since for every pair of faults it either proves equivalence or it returns a distinguishing vector. The advantage of the approach lies in its practicality since it uses conventional ATPG and it automatically benefits from advances in the field. Experiments on ISCAS’85 and full-scan ISCAS’89 circuits demonstrate the competitiveness of the method and measure the performance of simulation for fault equivalence.     

Securing Scan Control in Crypto Chips

The design of secure ICs requires fulfilling means conforming to many design rules in order to protect access to secret data. On the other hand, designers of secure chips cannot neglect the testability of their chip since high quality production testing is primordial to a good level of security. However, security requirements may be in conflict with test needs and testability improvement techniques that increase both observability and controllability. In this paper, we propose to merge security and testability requirements in a control-oriented design for security scan technique. The proposed security scan design methodology induces an adaptation of two main aspects of testability technique design: protection at protocol level and at scan path level. Without loss of generality, the proposed solution is evaluated on a simple crypto chip in terms of security and design cost.

基于嵌入式M C U的计算器电路的可测性设计

给出了两种可测性设计方法,详细介绍了基于4位嵌入式MCU的计算器电路的可测性设计,包括ROM内容测试和模块划分,通过这些设计,大大提高了电路的可控制性和可观察性。